


Summer S'mores

by Aisalynn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 16:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1556927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aisalynn/pseuds/Aisalynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Bechdel Test Comment Fic-A-Thon a few years ago. Prompt: Buffy, Dawn - summer camp adventures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer S'mores

When Dawn was nine years old, all her friends went to summer camp. She wanted to go too, but Mom was worried about the distance and Dad said he didn’t trust the camp councilors, so she got left behind.

She cried for hours the day her friends left, wailing her nine year old heart out about how she wouldn’t see any of her friends for weeks and how her summer would be absolutely _dreadful_ and about all the things she was missing out on: swimming, hiking, campfires, smores… She cried herself into an uneasy sleep, and by the time she woke up, it was night time, her face was swollen and puffy and Buffy was standing beside her bed, flashlight in one hand, sleeping bag in the other.

“Come on,” she’d said, poking Dawn roughly in the side with the flashlight. “We’re going camping.”

This was before Buffy turned fifteen and started to ignore Dawn for more “important” things like boys, clothes, school dances and vampires, and they spent an entire week camping out in the back yard, sleeping in an ancient, two person tent their mother had buried in the basement for the past ten years. During the day they had water balloon fights and ate popsicles--both the red, white and blue rocket pops that were Buffy’s favorite and the orange dreamsicles that were Dawn’s--and used toothpicks to paint flowers on their toes and fingernails in what Buffy called “arts and crafts time.” One day Buffy got one of her older friends to drive them to the city pool and they spent hours teaching Dawn how to dive, lying down on towels and soaking up the hot summer sun when the lifeguards blew the whistle for break time, only to get up start again when it was over.

At night they stretched their sleeping bags on the ground and lay on their backs, staring up at the sky. They couldn’t see the stars very well--too many lights in LA--but Dawn told Buffy what she’d learned about constellations in her astronomy lessons at school anyway, waving in the general direction of where each one should have been. They had smores every night, even though Dad wouldn’t let them have a campfire. Buffy stabbed marshmallows with a fork and held them over the long-reach lighter she’d snuck out of Dad’s toolbox, carefully rotating them so each one turned a perfect golden brown.

“See?” she said. “A perfect mallow. All melty without the char.” Dawn had rolled her eyes and stuck her marshmallow directly into the small flame, declaring that she liked hers burnt. Buffy had scrunched her nose in distaste. 

*

When Dawn was fourteen years old, her sister jumped off a tower and into a portal that was ripping open the walls between dimensions, destroying the world. It was Dawn’s blood that opened it, but it was she who got left behind.

She cried herself to sleep almost every night that summer, and during the day she stayed inside, trapped in the air conditioned rooms, skin still pale from the winter spent away from the sun. Everyone tried to make the summer better for her, suggesting trips to the beach and the movies, buying her favorite summer snacks and stocking up the cabinets and freezer, but they were too lost in their own pain for any trip to be fun, and Dawn couldn’t finish a Dreamsicle without feeling sick.

When the Scoobies went out at night to patrol the area, Spike would watch her if they didn’t need him. Every time he made her hot chocolate--just like her mom’s--and he never forgot the tiny marshmallows. One night, she asked to borrow his lighter, and he watched silently as she methodically stabbed the marshmallows with a toothpick and held them over the flame, letting each one catch on fire and burn until there was nothing left but black goo and char on the counter top.

She knew then that the week she and Buffy spent camping in the backyard never happened.

*

During the summer when Dawn was fifteen she spent many nights outside. She didn’t know, when Buffy agreed to teach her to fight, that it would mean nights sitting cold and bored in the middle of a cemetery, waiting to see if the dead decided to rise that night, and she wasn’t exactly looking forward to it when she realized that. But her sister had grabbed the old sleeping bags from the closet and smiled at her. “It’ll be just like camping,” she said.

And it was, sort of. During the day they sparred in the backyard (Buffy always won, but she said Dawn was improving) and ate popsicles during breaks. They whittled stakes with slayer-sharp knives in what Buffy wryly called “arts and crafts time,” a twisted, but real, smile on her lips. At night they sat on sleeping bags in the cemetery and looked up at the stars (so easier to see in Sunnydale than in LA) and on nights when it seemed like nothing was going to happen Buffy brought out the marshmallows, chocolate and the long-reach lighter she’d pulled out of the junk drawer in the kitchen.

She stabbed each marshmallow with a fork and slowly rotated it over the flame, until it was a soft, golden brown all the way around. “See?” she said, holding one marshmallow out for Dawn to take. “Perfect.”

Dawn brought the smore up to her mouth, the gooey marshmallow dripping out of the graham sandwich and onto her fingers, and said nothing about liking hers a little a burnt. “Yeah,” she agreed through a mouthful of sugar and chocolate. “Perfect.”


End file.
